Gowalla closes to the public

Location-based social network Gowalla is no longer available to
the public, after being acquired by Facebook in December 2011.

The move comes exactly three years after Gowalla made waves at
its South By Southwest launch, going head-to-head with check-in
rival Foursquare. Since Gowalla was acquired by Facebook,
former Gowalla CEO Josh Williams has been working on a Facebook API
that lets developers better integrate location-based services with
shared content.

Alex Wyler, a Facebook software engineer, wrote last week about how the social networking site will be
pushing to add more data to updates posted from any apps people are
using, including location data.

Gowalla started to wind down
at the end of January, but officially closed down just as the
2012 South by Southwest swung into action. Visitors to Gowalla.com
are greeted with a simple
message: "Thank you for going out with Gowalla. It was a
pleasure to journey with you around the world. Download your
check-ins, photos and lists here soon."

As suggested by the message, Facebook will not acquire Gowalla's
user data. Gowalla users will be able to access their Passport data
in the next few weeks.